A doorbell camera with no subscription: is it just an expensive chime? Cameras

Local storage cameras with a card slot and an open protocol exist and are the answer to the question you are actually asking. The trade is that you do the work: you configure the storage, you handle remote access yourself, and there is no polished app to hand to a flatmate. In exchange nothing expires, nothing is uploaded and nobody can change the terms next year.

You have read it correctly. On that ecosystem the recorded video is the subscription, with the entry plan covering a single device at about five dollars a month or fifty a year, and the higher tiers adding whole-home coverage and features like continuous recording. Live view and a notification with no history is close to useless for your parcel question, because by the time you open the app the person has gone. If you want to pay once, you are shopping for local storage, not for that brand.

Shared entrance is the part I would think hardest about. Pointing a recording camera at a communal area affects your neighbours, and in a lot of places that pulls you into data protection obligations you did not sign up for, plus a conversation with your building management. Worth a five-minute check of your own rules before you spend anything, because a camera you have to take down is worse than no camera.

For parcels specifically, a cheap indoor camera pointed at the inside of your own door does most of the job at a fraction of the cost, and does not involve the lobby at all. It will not tell you who took it from the lobby, which may make it useless to you, but it is worth knowing before spending two hundred dollars on the wrong problem.

Check the wiring situation before the feature list. Battery models are easy to fit and then need charging in January when you least want to be outside with a screwdriver, and wired ones need a transformer that a lot of older flats do not have.